Updated Flood Maps Show How Vulnerable New York City Really Is

The Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) released
new flood insurance maps for New York City and ProPublica has
released a nifty interactive map showing how the zones will look
if the city actually floods.

This new set of maps replaces those drawn up in 1983, and reveal
that twice as many structures now sit in flood zones, according
to ProPublica.One view of the flood
zones during Hurricane SandyProPublica

The darker the color of the water, the deeper the flooding.
Damage to buildings, from least to greatest, goes from light
yellow to deep red.

The differences in the maps for this one square mile of Staten
Island are shocking.

Here are what they thought were the flood zones in
2007:ProPublica

And here is what really happened when Sandy struck. Waves pounded
this one square mile of land and submerged the entire area in
more than 10 feet of water. The orange buildings represent
structures that suffered major damage, and the ones in red were
destroyed:ProPublica

So, FEMA has made a few changes to the new map:Coney Island, on
the southern tip of Brooklyn, was also hit really hard. Here is
the map from 2007:Here is what Sandy
did:Virtually all of Coney
Island was a high-velocity "V" zone, depicted by the dark blue
color of the water in the map above.

The new flood zone map covers most, but not all of the area
damaged by the storm:The 2007 maps were more
accurate for the neighborhood of Red Hook on the western edge of
Brooklyn, but Sandy still wrought more damage than experts
predicted.

This is what the flood zones for Red Hook in Brooklyn looked like
in 2007:ProPublica

On the right of the image you can see how far inland water
actually flooded during Sandy: ProPublica